I think Mrs. P. is right. The newspaper lady told on herself when she said, "And, only because he was queried about it, Chan pondered the rival who isn’t here — Plushenko."

In other words, the absent Plushenko was the farthest thing from Patrick's mind as he prepared to take on Hanyu, Takahash, Kozuka and Fernadez this weekend. When Ms. Dimano pestered him about it out of the blue (Come on, say it -- you think you can kick Plushenko's butt, right? Say it! Say it! ), the best Patrick could come up with is a mild I hope so.

Exactly. Sorry, but if I was Patrick, I would definitely be thinking more about competing against the guy who has the highest SP score EVER or the guy who beat me in my home country than somebody who wasn't here.

Actually, I think the true Patrick Chan is revealed more in the paragraph above that one.

As for Chan, he spent the off-day in Sochi, playing ping-pong at the athletes’ hotel and taking a tourist jaunt into the distant city centre. “We walked down to the water. It’s just nice to see water after being in Colorado. Then we went to look at the Olympic clock. It’s kind of weird because that’s the only Olympic-y thing in the city. It doesn’t really feel like a Winter Olympics city, with the beautiful weather and all the palm trees.”

Oh, a thing... The title of the article - or "article" - is apparently "Plushenko won't bother with Grand Prix season" - WON'T - ahum, lady, it took this long for you to notice? May I respectfully suggest that it should have been "didn't"?

Who is that woman? I'm not Russian, but I read many times the Russian media, they had never wrote such a disgusting article about Plushenko's rival. And Chan is a rude man! After this I don't like him!

Dearest plushenkofan:

On behalf of Canadian figure skating fans everywhere, I apologize to you from the bottom of my heart. I have not read DiManno's or even know what she said, but she is the most offensive woman in Canada and she knows NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING about the sport of skating. She once wrote that Shae-Lynne Bourne and Victor Kraatz would have a difficult time beating the Chinese teams with their big lifts and throws. This is not a joke. She actually wrote this.

When they sent her to Nice, I wrote an email to the editor of the Toronto Star and asked if they couldn't find someone who at least likes the sport to cover Worlds so that fans would at least get useful information and he replied that Rosie loved skating and begged for the assignment. Let's see, a one-week, all expense paid trip to the French Riviera in the early spring. Yeah, I'd tell the boss I was the world's biggest figure skating fan to get that one too.

Please don't hold ANYTHING that woman wrote against Patrick or anyone else she quotes. She's unbelieveable. She's a hockey reporter so of course shes knows about skating.

On behalf of Canadian figure skating fans everywhere, I apologize to you from the bottom of my heart. I have not read DiManno's or even know what she said, but she is the most offensive woman in Canada and she knows NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING about the sport of skating. She once wrote that Shae-Lynne Bourne and Victor Kraatz would have a difficult time beating the Chinese teams with their big lifts and throws. This is not a joke. She actually wrote this.

For real? Yikes! ROTFL. This is definitely not someone to be taken seriously if this is how much she bothers to study before she writes about skating.

The lady makes FACTUAL errors in her columns, so this does not surprise me. The error I asked her to correct in that one column was regarding if Nam Nguyen was old enough to go to Sochi. She said he wasn't, I explained how he was. Goodness it's not that hard to figure out!